An Anchorage man who attacked three registered sex offenders last year said he wants his story “to serve as a deterrent” to anyone tempted to turn their pain into violence or take the law into their own hands.
That’s what he did in the summer of 2016. He now faces up to 25 years in prison.
“If you have already lost your youth, like me, due to a child abuser, please do not throw away your present and your future by committing acts of violence,” Jason Vukovich wrote in a five-page letter sent to the Anchorage Daily News in November.
Read the comments on this article – most celebrate the man as a hero. Particularly disturbing is the one that says let him out, give him another hammer and a new list.
The judge in Vukovich’s case probably doesn’t want it. On one hand, he’ll want to give a light sentence to appease the public and, despite his presumed neutrality, he is elected and therefore subject to public perception (think Brock Turner’s judge). On the other, a heavy one is warranted given the extent and circumstances of the case, at least as reported. Lord knows there are probably a lot more gruesome details our fearless reporters are burying to protect their narrative. Not to mention the purported claim to prosecute to the fullest extent those that misuse the registry, of which this case is a shining example.
Curious to see where this goes, and hope it runs the gamut through the appeals process regardless. Assuming those Vukovich attacked were no threat to anyone despite their convictions (based on the overall re-offense rate of convicted RSOs), it certainly helps show the danger registrants are placed in and lack of proactivity (if not outright support) of law enforcement and local legislators in preventing it.
This is a great case to keep a reference on to show that the registry is used by bad intentioned and very dangerous persons to harass, exploit, and harm those people found on it.
What this man is doing is no less evil and wicked, and yet he’s being treated as a hero. This is sad.
I want to have compassion for this guy, I really do. But, it makes me angry knowing he is a repeat offender in and out of jail his whole life. There is no registry for him. No one will take revenge for his transgressions. I wonder how many offenses his 2 victims have. – I give him a pass on attacking the 3rd man who attacked him. – that is just eye for an eye justice in my book.
I do have compassion for the man as he was abused as a child and took his anger out on innocent victims. I did the same thing to my victim, except without any violence and to a much lessor extent. However, I did not have a history of any crimes and this man violated many laws throughout his life and spent many years in prison. His letter to Hanlon was just a way of seeking sympathy, which he deserves none.
I also can’t help but question the man’s sincerity. Is this genuine remorse or an attempt to press his sentencing judge for a slap on the wrist? The fact that he stole property from the victims in his current case undermines the argument that he attacked them in retribution for the childhood abuses he reportedly endured.
Another thing. If his current offenses are a one-man crusade against SOs, how many SOs did he attack during any of his previous jail/prison stretches? If none, that’s another knock on his sincerity. I know from my own prison experience that inmates who have no family and nothing on their book are ignored, no matter what their offenses were, sex offenses included.
Plus, would he interfere if an SO were being attacked in jail/prison solely because that person was an SO? Would/will he talk to prison gang leadership about the moral ambiguities of vigilante justice? Guessing not.
Those who have spent their lives running in and out of prison are very adept at evoking sympathy, and I for one cannot blindly accept his story at face value, especially considering he is an admitted thief and liar.
I wanted this article to be something different. I really needed to see some thing that would portray victims of vigilante justice as just that, victims.
But I hardly ever got the impression that the perpetrator of these crimes sees his victims as law abiding citizens with a past transgression who did not deserve their attacks. I only got the impression that he fears going to prison for life.
I will shed no tears for this punk ! this lame would not have been able to find them if the state would not have gave him a friggin web site and a dang google road map , come on give him life with out , “in salutary ” so he cant be used as a torpedo on other RC’s
It’s said that a picture speaks a thousand words. So do all those tats. I don’t believe he attacked them because he was abused as a child. He did it because he has the propensity to commit crimes, and got off on it. Period. I have no sympathy for him.
….
Couldn’t resist commenting on the Anchorage Daily News story. Cut and pasted here:
I, for one find several things about this situation very disturbing.
One, did Vukovich or anyone commenting on this post bother to find out why Vukovich’s victims were on the registry in the first place? Did they sneak into day care centers and snatch prepubescent children and whisk them off? Did they kidnap someone from a park and keep them in the basement? Were they pimps or traffickers? Or are they there because they streaked while they were in college, took a whiz on a dumpster behind a McDonald’s, o they had sex with their girlfriends when she was 15 and he was 16?
No registry tells those stories, and it’s pretty unlikely that Vukovich went to the Court Clerk’s office to research cases to find the specifics of any of the offenders he attacked. The same to most users of this forum, who apparently think all sex offender registrants, without exception, must have molested stadiums full of toddlers.
Second, Vukovich is an admitted liar and thief and spent the majority of his life running in and out of jail/prison. Such individuals are very adept and evoking sympathy. But the fact that he stole property from at least some of his victims suggests that his motives were beyond retribution for whatever sexual assaults he supposedly suffered in his childhood. The possibility that he is shooting for public hero status to try to press his elected judge into a lighter sentence can’t be ignored.
Third, I defy anyone to live under the laws and rules connected to the sex offender registry for a week and then call it a “lax” punishment. Generally, registrants can’t live, work or go anywhere, or socialize with anyone. It’s worse than prison in the sense that it makes it nearly impossible for them to support themselves, requirements change almost daily, and affects the registrant’s family as well.
And finally, the re-offense rate for sex offenders is among the lowest of all other type of felonies, second only to murderers. Contrary to popular belief, the arrest rate of registered sex offenders is only around 12% nationwide and drops to around 5% when weeding out parole/probation or registry ( failure to register, residence or work restrictions, etc) violations. Most states report less than a 1% rate of registered sex offenders committing another sex offense. Vukovich’s victims have paid their penance and odds are would never have bothered anyone again. I find it very hard to accept the claims on this forum that their sentences were inadequate from those who have never bothered to see what those sentences were.
By the way, everyone on this forum who has kids is a child molester by the strict letter of the law. Having an Internet connection facilitates their access to material that incites his/her sexual desires, and falls under the child molestation statutes in some states. Looking forward to your inclusion on the sex offender registry and a visit from the next Vukovich.
Thought I’d get some critical responses, but the only one so far was anti-registry. Keeping an eye on it…
Thid guy knows how the system works amd is playing it. I watched guys act so sorry in court, then laugh it up in jail. It’s a game to them.
One other thing. Why do most automatically accept that he was abused as a child? I don’t know what “second degree abuse of a minor” is Alaska was in 1989, but if it was comparable to the same offense here, it might have been something like a disciplinary beating for stealing a car or something. If the details his purported childhood abuse came from the documents of one of his own prior cases – and the article as written certainly suggests they were – isn’t this just another example of the unsupported word of an admitted liar and thief?
The reporter claims Vukovich’s mother couldn’t be reached for the article. What and how much effort went into trying to contact her? It could be (and often is) that the reporter didn’t actually try to contact the person. If they had, the statement is usually “a phone call or email wasn’t returned” or the person “couldn’t be found.”
My guess – and I admit it’s only a guess – is that the reporter didn’t want to try to corroborate the abuse claims because an interview with Vukovich’s mother may have disrupted the “our hero” narrative the story obviously seeks to portray.